Scratch Build – In Progress Project: Hail to the King

That is awesome, but the thing that hits me with that photo is WOW that thing is massive.

 

This project was commissioned by NVIDIA as a gift to Gearbox for the launch of Duke Nukem Forever. Partners in this project include:
NVIDIA - Financed the project, project manager was Kris Rey, Community Manager from NVIDIA. Special thanks also go out to Eric Liu, Leslie Pirritano, and Mike DeNeffe (all NVIDIANS) for making this project happen. Sean Wix and Tim Springer from NVIDIA were patient enough to let us use their lab space and provide trouble-shooting to get some insane dual-screen 3d action going.
EVGA - supplied Classified 3 motherboard and two Hydrocopper 2 580s
Danger Den - Laser cutting services and all water-cooling at a nice discount
Crucial - killer Ballistix Smart Tracer ram and two SSDS
East Bridge Manufacturing - Discounted metal fabrication services - hub and mini gun came out beautiful!
BoxGods - insane design that make the project so much easier
ASUS - two 23" 3d monitors
Frozen CPU - nice discounts on various parts especially the UV Green wire for the PSUs
Silverstone - 1500 watt PSU
Fernando from Painters Supply in Salem Oregon - busted his tail to help get skin painted in time
The guys at Mid Valley Metal works for the use of their HUGE powder coating oven for bending the skins
My wife Delia who helped me heat bend the pod skins and who put up with the mess in our great room while I built this puppy
and my best friend (next to the wife) Chris Fletcher who gave up his time to travel with me to NVIDIA to complete the build
Gearbox and 2k for making the game and supporting this project!!!

I will not reproduce everything in the Geforce.com article found here http://www.geforce.com/#/News/articles/nvidia-presents-the-duke-nukem-forever-pc-mod but will instead add to it to provide more details and allow you to give feedback. Geno and I feel we want to not only produce worklogs to publicize the project but also to make the worklog a learning experience and to give back to the community. This worklog will be spread out over a a week or so - please keep checking for updates.

As stated in the article, we had several concepts for this project which were considered before arriving at one which everyone liked. My first submission was a school-girl themed design. I will not go into too much detail on this one but you can figure it out if you look at some Duke artwork. The second concept was the single Duke logo with buildings on each side.



If we used this concept, I would have included some pretty insane miniature buildings.


Geno, true to form, came up with a few twists "just in case" we wanted to go in a different direction. This was his just for giggles concept:

 

WAHOA freaken crazy huge!

 

Once Geno had the Solidworks drawing done, Danger Den set to work cutting the acrylic. Here you see some of the pieces from Danger Den


Geno had East Bay Manufacture fabricate the hub and gun







Used a wooden buck to heat bend the acrylic the round shape needed to skin the pods



The first effort bending did not produce a perfect result. Had to reskin the buck as the vinyl flooring did not work well

Before bending:



After first bending






After second bending

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMT5dWeNscg&feature=player_embedded

 

Wow...DB--all the time you were explaining using a cover over the bending buck and I was insisting you would not have enough time before the acrylic cooled...I did not understand you had a HUGE ass oven and could just wheel the bending buck right into the oven lol. You should have just shown me that picture man.

Video is awesome, you can tell the guy REALLY is blown away and not just doing the normal PR speak. That or he was already sloshed lol. What happened to the center dot for the top cover? Last minute window replacement right?

Just an insane job DB, Chris, and crew.

 

yeah - will have the top one replaced when we install at their HQ

And I did not use the cover to bend after all . . just hands

worked out well

 

I look forward to the log posts, I am sure there will be a lot to learn in this log, and in the feedback/questions.

sub'd

 

Needed my Wonder-Twin g33k powers to complete this project:




Jig for drilling and tapping holes in end of rib sections:



Counter-sinking holes



Gluing the pod covers to get them ready to paint:


Tapping the manifold:



Getting ready to leak test the manifold:





Duke Manifold Leak Test

The next step was to glue the skins onto the pods. I used Weld-On 3 - a thin glue which uses capillary action. You apply it to the seems with a syringe.


Making the window bubblers. Layered 1/8 UV green acrylic . . .stripped down hypodermic needles so air could pass thru them at a reasonable rate









The Reservoir

 

Ok now this is COOL!

 

all those needles...shivers lol

 

wooo ... work amazing .... truly amazing Congratulations

 

Need to take the monitors apart to paint the enclosures




Masked the pods so there would be windows left after painting - paint done then pack it all up for roadtrip to NVIDIA HQ . . .




All the stuff laid out at NVIDIA HQ



Installing the floating PSU







All the pods in place looks pretty good



Installing the mobo





Let's get those monitors on . . .Epic mod time! Should wrap them in bacon and deep fry them?



Tomorrow we will look at the PSU and rad pods close up - and then get it all fired up including some video

 

The picture with the three pods laid out on the table and the hub all wired up with its guts hanging out looks awesome. The hub looks like some sort of Terminator type sentry gun with arms for kinetic shields or something. I am also amazed how how much work you guys did in such a short period of time. Anyone that has done a hardcore custom mod will know exactly what I mean. There is normally a ton of install, uninstall, drill a hole, reinstall type work that can take weeks--and that is in your own shop/work space where you have ALL of your tools etc., not in a "foreign" work environment. Really a testament to your organizational skills DB. This build would have made a nice episode for a reality show I bet lol.

Wrapped in bacon? You know it!